"For the ordinary soldier of the American Revolution, memorialized by neither statue nor monument, grave sites offer a rare opportunity for remembrance. Yet more than 250 years after the outbreak of that war, many of those graves remain obscure. They are hidden beneath battlefields where the fallen were hastily covered in the ravaged earth or below barely legible markers. Amidst the more prominent recent commemorations of our nation's beginnings, there have been quiet efforts to care for and give visibility to these final resting places. This work reveals not only the human cost of the Revolution, but also the lived experiences of soldiers who didn't make it into the history books — and what veterans did after the war's end to help build a new nation.
In the Midlands of South Carolina, the site of one of the Revolution's bloodiest battles, a team of preservationists is attempting to honor the soldiers who died there. The clash between the British and the Continental Army on August 16, 1780, known as the Battle of Camden, ended in pandemonium. The Americans, led by Major General Horatio Gates, had marched for days on little food, with dysentery plaguing their ranks. A large number of the soldiers were inexperienced, and quickly fled the British onslaught; Gates himself abandoned the battlefield in the mass retreat. But others held their ground, among them the 7th Maryland Regiment. Many fought hand-to-hand to the death even as defeat proved certain. Their stand allowed the American forces to avoid complete destruction.
Archaeologists Steven D. Smith and James B. Legg have spent decades mapping and interpreting the battle site, where the soldiers' mass graves have become increasingly vulnerable to erosion and looting. In 2022, with the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of South Carolina (USC-SCIAA) and the South Carolina Battleground Preservation Trust, the team finally excavated 14 soldiers from a disturbed grave. The soldiers were reinterred with military honors in 2023 at Camden's Old Presbyterian Cemetery. But the mystery of who they were lingered. Texas-based FHD Forensics, which specializes in identifying John Does, was invited to help determine their identities…"
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